1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to message thread management and more specifically to a system and method of highlighting high-priority messages and message threads.
2. Introduction
Modern personal communications still rely heavily on text-based modes of communication such as email, text messaging, instant messaging, etc. The text-based correspondence is often exchanged in several chunks over a period of time. For example, email correspondence between two individuals may consist of several email messages going back and forth between the two people for a few days, each message written in response to another. Such a burst of messages going back and forth may be closely related to each other and have a common topic. At a later time, the two individuals may exchange another burst of email messages over a different period of time to discuss a different topic.
These messages are typically stored and accessed through software applications that present virtual inboxes to the user. However, without a way to efficiently organize the messages that may have been exchanged over different periods of time and with different groups of people, it can be very difficult to sift through the inbox and find relevant messages. One common way to organize messages in an inbox is through a message thread. A message thread allows users to group related messages together for easier access.
The individual messages in a message thread are typically presented in simple chronological or reverse-chronological order. Although there are other ways to sort the messages such as by title or sender in alphabetical order, by size, etc., the traditional sorting methods are poor at taking into account how important, relevant, or useful each message may be to the user. In addition, traditional message inboxes offer limited ways for the user to alter the way the messages are presented. Although some email services have attempted to offer prioritization of messages in an inbox, their primary and limited focus has been on prioritizing newly arrived emails, often based on the identities of the senders, rather than messages in existing threads. Moreover, the existing systems only employ a bifurcated approach when it comes to message prioritization. In other words, there are only two priority levels for the messages—either high priority or low priority—with no varying degrees or shades of priority in between. Next, the “high-priority” messages are simply separated out from the rest of the messages and placed inside a separate “priority inbox.” Finally, once placed inside this priority inbox, the messages are simply presented to the user in chronological order with no options for further organizing or prioritizing them.
In view of the foregoing, it would be advantageous to provide a method, system, and computer-readable storage device to manage message threads by detecting high-priority messages and allowing greater flexibility for the user to dictate which messages are to be highlighted and how they are to be highlighted.